Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Is The New Mel Gibson Film A Vile, Racist Right-Wing Fantasy?



Marlow Stern says that's what Dragged Across Concrete, Mel Gibson's new film, is.

Context is certainly required before a final judgment is passed but it sure does appear that the film is aimed at Trump's hardcore base.

From Stern's review at The Daily Beast:
Mel Gibson’s New Police Brutality Movie Is a Vile, Racist Right-Wing Fantasy...
Making its world premiere in Venice, Dragged Across Concrete’s premise is as follows: a pair of detectives, Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) are caught on tape applying excessive force to a Hispanic prisoner in handcuffs, in the form of Ridgeman grinding his boot into the man’s neck until it emits a cracking sound. (During the bust, Ridgeman and Lurasetti also mock a scared, naked Latina suspect, claiming they can’t understand what she’s saying due to her accent. Both scenes are played for laughs.) With the tape destined to go viral, Ridgeman and Lurasetti are suspended for six weeks without pay, though the chief of police (Don Johnson) is sympathetic to their plight, delivering a rambling sermon about how being branded a
“racist” today is akin to getting labeled a “communist” in the 1950s—or, to quote the president, this is a WITCH HUNT! and these two violent cops are the real victims.
Though a six-week suspension seems like a mild punishment, especially considering this is the third time Ridgeman’s been busted for using excessive force, he is in desperate need of cash. You see, his wife Melanie (Laurie Holden) has MS and his daughter is bullied by black kids on her four-block trek to school. Worried that those same black kids will rape their daughter once she matures, they vow to move to a better neighborhood (presumably one with less black people). “I never thought I was a racist until living in this area,” Melanie says, her husband nodding in agreement. So Ridgeman cooks up a plan to rob an out-of-town crook, and ropes in Lurasetti with a Forgotten Man spiel: “I don’t politic, I don’t change with the times,” he explains, lamenting how that matters more in today’s world than “good, honest hard work.”
Things don’t go as planned, of course.
And this from Variety:
His younger partner Lurasetti (Vaughn) is the more temperate and ethically conscious of the two, and even he’s a crude, heedless racist — though he dimly insists that ordering “a cup of dark roast every Martin Luther King Day” proves otherwise.
-RW  

8 comments:

  1. Yes, RW, I'm always more than happy to point out the problems of 'duh-versity' with statistics, but that to is now considered racist. Those who call others racist though will never move to a ghetto minority neighborhood or move to a more diverse country.

    So what is the point of this post?

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    1. Re: The Lab Manager,

      --- Yes, RW, I'm always more than happy to point out the problems of 'duh-versity' with statistics, ---

      How would your "statistics" justify the violence committed by the two detectives in this new movie against two human beings? You're entitled to your preferences even if you think they're supported by "statistics", but you don't get to establish a new code of ethics based on your prejudices, a) because they would lack universality and b) they can be used against you just as easily. That's the point of the story the movie is telling.

      Your attempt at questioning other people's sincerity because of where their choose to live is particularly fallacious, considering a) all people choose acccording to a ranking of values which you're not privy to (meaning, you can't read minds) and b) all people generally seek to improve their lot, which means anyone, if he or she cans, will seek a better life for himself or herself and his or her children. That doesn't mean they become hypocrites the moment they don't agree with your views about other people you don't know.

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    2. Damned those tiny 'keyboards'...

      ...where *they* choose, if he or she *can*...

      Delete
  2. Everything that Lab Manager has to say about blacks and Mexicans was said by the English about the Scottish.

    Mel should remake the first act of Braveheart with white cops in a black neighborhood instead of English troops in a Scottish village.

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    1. Show me a functional black run country in Africa or a black run city in America. That's all you have to do. And one you would move to if you could. (I already know the answer to this one.)

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  3. I haven't seen the movie but movies from today's Hollywood cannot even portray a Black or Hispanic committing unprovoked violence against a White person. Any film portraying, say, a Black mugger attacking a White couple would be labelled a racist right wing fantasy. Because, you know, it never happens in real life.

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    1. Hollywood is not a public utility. If you want a certain type of movie made.... make it.

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